


Everything's Okay

by ElenaCee



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV) Devil Reveal, Possible Spoilers for Season 4, Post-Season/Series 03 Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2018-12-14
Packaged: 2019-09-16 07:22:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16949559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElenaCee/pseuds/ElenaCee
Summary: "It's all true."





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Since everyone is doing it, here's my take on ~~the first few minutes~~ what happened post Reveal (and isn't it great that we now finally know she knows and how she learned it?). I hope you guys like it.
> 
> I highly doubt I've hit on the way the show will go about this, but just in case: Possible spoilers for S04E01.

“It’s true!”

Chloe Decker stared, her mind blank except for this single thought.  _ It’s true. _ The face in front of her was undeniably alien. The face of The Devil. And this time, there was no way she could argue it away.

There was no room for any other thought, any other perception except for the inexplicable sight before her. If there had been, she’d been able to hear his halting “Detective?”, notice the transition from incomprehension to dawning realization to sheer horror on Lucifer’s face, would have recognized the shocked expression in his glowing eyes (glowing eyes!) for what it was.

But all she could see was The Devil wearing her partner’s clothes.

No special effect could account for this. She knew she hadn’t been roofied. The slim hope that this creature before her wasn’t really her Lucifer but an actor he had somehow hired to be here now didn’t take root. He was wearing Lucifer’s clothes, down to his pocket square. He had Lucifer's body type, Lucifer's bearing.

This  _ was _ Lucifer. Lucifer was the Devil. The Lucifer. It was true. What he’d said.

With this incontrovertible proof in front of her, the smokescreens her mind had conjured to protect her from this knowledge all this time crumbled like wet paper. He had never used drugs to augment his strength. He wasn’t double-jointed. He had never roofied anyone. The brief glimpse of his face -  _ this _ face - she’d had years ago hadn’t been a trick of the light.

Those smokescreens had become weaker over time, to the point where the rational part of her must have thrown up its hands in surrender eventually, and she’d simply gone on ignoring everything, telling herself that he was just a weirdo with a mojo that she didn’t understand and couldn’t explain. Couldn’t explain how he got out of handcuffs and locked cars to be inside a locked house seconds later, or on the roof of a house, or how she herself had ended up on the roof of a house just now.

But no. It was true, what she hadn’t allowed herself to believe.

After its extended bout of stalling, her brain suddenly went into gear, and then it ran away from her, out of control.

He truly had never lied to her. He  _ was _ immortal. He really had a brother who could stop time. An  _ angelic _ brother. He inspired ‘carnal fascination’ because he was the Devil, temptation incarnate. He could draw out hidden desire because it really was his ‘gift from God’.

God. God really existed.

So did Heaven. And Hell.

On feet she could barely feel, she took a halting step back. “It’s all true.”

Lucifer really was the Devil.

She felt her sight narrow down to tunnel vision, and her training kicked in, warning her of an impending blackout. Taking a couple of deep breaths, she bent over, hands on her knees, and kept breathing until it receded.

When she looked up again, Lucifer still hadn’t moved. “I’m sorry,” he said, very softly, “I can’t make it go away….”

Chloe took another breath and opened her mouth. “It was true all along,” she came out with, still stuck on that thought.

Now Lucifer was the one taking a step back. “Yes,” he said, still in that soft voice. “I have never lied to you.”

This was also true. With a sense of relief, her mind seized that thought. Lucifer was the Devil, but he had never lied to her.

She realized that she needed time; time to reparse everything she remembered him telling her through the lens of this new knowledge; everything he’d ever said, from his ‘God-given’ name to the fact that Marcus Pierce really was Cain, from the Bible.

Time she didn’t have right now, because Lucifer was taking another step back, and she could tell that he was about to bolt.

The Devil. About to bolt. From her.

Already he was looking down and to the side in preparation to make a run for it, a movement familiar to her.  _ He _ was familiar to her. He might be the Devil, but she knew him. She’d told him so, and she liked to think that she had never lied to him, either. Not about this.

“Lucifer Morningstar, don’t you dare run out on me,” she managed. She had a feeling she’d never see him again if she allowed him to leave now. He might truly be the Devil, but she wasn’t ready for that, for him to make this kind of decision for both of them. Again.

Besides. “We’ve got a crime scene to take care of.” She nodded at the dead bodies, one of which was her fiancé’s. And the feathers. Lots and lots of bloody feathers.

Feathers. He was the Devil, a Fallen Angel. He had wings. With feathers.

“Detective,” he said, still avoiding her eyes, “you don’t understand. I can’t make it go away.” He raised his hands - red and blackened like his face - to look at them instead of her. “Of all the times for it to come back, it had to be now.”

A growing sense of urgency allowed her to find a new focus. “No,  _ you _ don’t understand, Lucifer. Backup will be here any second. Unless we can concoct a story that will fool Ella of all people to explain the bloodied feathers, we need to get rid of them at least.”

He hesitated.

She bent down to pick up the first feather. “Lucifer, help me. Now. There’s no time.”

He was the Devil. She’d given an order to the Devil.

She was holding one of his feathers.

Blackness encroached again on her vision, but she fought it back through sheer force of will.  _ No time. Not now. Focus. _

She reached out for another bloodied feather, this one longer and missing a lot of barbules on one side. Her chest hurt where the bullet from Pierce had struck her bulletproof vest, making the movement difficult, but she breathed through it, breathed through the realization that the feather was damaged from a gunshot. She’d been to the fairs, she’d used the airguns to shoot at the little prizes, she knew what damage from air pellets to feathers looked like, and this looked very similar.

Out of the corner of her eyes, she could see Lucifer turning back to her. “You’re helping me? Helping the Devil?”

She shook off yet another realization. The feathers were bloodied because the bullets that had wreaked all this havoc hadn’t just damaged the feathers. They had also damaged Lucifer. She must have passed out after the shot hit her vest and missed all this.

No way Ella wouldn’t draw the same conclusion. She could practically hear her go on about spray patterns and angles of impact and how the blood wasn’t avian.

“No, Lucifer,” she said, beginning to gather feathers by the handful, “the Devil is helping me help him clear him and this crime scene before Ella sees all this and puts two and two together.” Wait. He had been shot. At least once. “Um.”

She looked at him, really looked, past the alien face with its glowing eyes. His clothes were torn, but there was no blood that she could see. But he must have bled, a lot, to stain all these feathers with his blood.

_ Detective, I’m bleeding. _

_ Of course you are. _

She remembered that he had recovered remarkably quickly back then. Hopefully, he would….

Her musings came to a halt when he gave a small nod (also very familiar to her) and bent down to join her efforts, moving a little stiffly but clearly not actively dying.

Together, they made short work of the feathers, collecting them in an empty cardboard box, while Lucifer kept throwing her cautious glances and she kept trying to ignore his otherworldly appearance.

“Detective,” he finally said as they were both doing circuits around the scene to check if they had missed anything, “are you quite all right?”

She looked at him, then at the crime scene. They had collected the feathers of an angel. There was a number of dead bodies. Lucifer had taken the knife from Pierce’s - Cain’s - chest. Things were looking like a normal shootout, at least at first glance.

Meanwhile, Lucifer was still the Devil.

She nodded, ignoring the way she was losing feeling in her face. “Hmhm. Sure. I’m fine. Everything’s okay. Why wouldn’t it?”

Lucifer really was the Devil.

Then, the blackness she’d been fighting off all this time made a spirited return, and this time, there was nothing else to focus on, and Chloe Decker’s world went dark.


	2. Chapter 2

“Chloe.”

She grunted.

“C’mon, Decker, open your eyes for me.”

The voice sounded insistent. She blinked. Light struck her eyes. She blinked again.

Ella’s worried face slowly came into focus. “Hey.”

She blinked again. Her disappointment that it wasn’t Lucifer looking down on her was acute.

Then, as her brain worked at coming online, she realized that she wasn’t living a déjà vu. Lucifer hadn’t just brought her - _ flown her?! _ \- to the top of a building. That was the past. This was the present. She had passed out like a damsel in distress, overwhelmed by her worldview getting a pretty substantial makeover.

“Hey, Ella,” she managed, sitting up.

“Woah, girlfriend,” Ella cautioned, “careful with the vertical, you may have a concussion.”

“I don’t have a concussion. Trust me, I’d know.” She looked around, trying to spot her partner.

_ Lucifer. The Devil. Feathers. Crime Scene. Cain, dead. _

_ Right. _ “What happened?” she added, playing for time while she tried to get her bearings. The place was crawling with Homicide and unis. She trusted Ella, but the truth - the Devil had shielded her with his wings to save her life - would still be too much for her. Probably.

“You don’t remember?” Ella asked, back to looking worried.

Oh boy, did she remember. “Pierce lured us into a trap. We were under fire from him and at least three accomplices. I was hit….” Automatically, her hand went to where Cain’s bullet had hit her vest. “Must have passed out.” The truth, except for the things she didn’t say.

Her gaze found the spot where the cardbox box they’d been collecting Lucifer’s feathers into had sat, and she almost sighed in relief. It was gone. Lucifer must have taken it with him.

“Where’s Lucifer?” Ella’s face didn’t stop looking worried.

“Ella….”

But before she could figure out what she could possibly follow that up with, the scientist was on her feet, walking over to the center of the loft. “From the trajectory of the bullet holes that are literally all over this place, this was where everyone was shooting at. There’s blood spatters, like someone was hit, repeatedly, and their blood sprayed all over the place. No blood on you; that leaves Lucifer. Chloe, he’s walking wounded.”

Chloe gulped. She hadn’t seen any blood on him, but then again, she hadn’t seen his wings, either. If he really was badly hurt…. But he would heal, right? “I didn’t see him get hit,” she managed. The truth, again.

“Yeah, okay, but why did he leave? It’s not like him, booking on you like that while you’re unconscious.”

“He’ll have his reasons,” Chloe said, trying to give a nonchalant shrug and wincing when the movement reminded her of the bruise in her chest.

It was the wrong thing to say. Ella’s expression darkened, and she came back to where Chloe was still sitting on the floor, leaning down towards her. “Chloe,” she hissed with a furtive glance at the rest of the CSI team, “I don’t have to tell you what this is looking like. Pierce is dead. He may really have been the Sinnerman, but the suits don’t know that and won’t believe it without hard evidence, which we still don’t have. And he was stabbed to death. And Lucifer’s nowhere to be found. And everyone at the precinct knows that he didn’t take you and Pierce getting engaged very well. Poor guy was practically a wreck.”

Chloe could feel herself grow cold as she realized that Ella was right, on two counts. One, it must have been Lucifer who killed Pierce, and two, that this was exactly what it would look like to the Department.

“I mean,” Ella went on, “it must have been a war zone in here and then some, so, if Lucifer acted in self-defense, no one could blame him. But the fact that he’s not here now is a pretty black mark against him.”

“He must have had his reasons,” Chloe repeated, closing her eyes against the memory of his red-charred skin and hellish eyes. ‘I can’t make it go away’, he’d said. She realized that he must somehow have become stuck in this form. Of course he’d vanished as soon as he could hear the first sirens. He would have been gunned down on sight looking like that.

_ Detective, I’m immortal. _

_ Detective, I’m bleeding. _

_ It appears you make me vulnerable. _

She hoped he was okay, wherever he was now. She hoped he wouldn’t disappear for good, now that she wasn’t there to tell him to stay put anymore. She hoped she’d see him again.

“Chloe,” Ella said, even more softly. “I really want to help you here, but what if I find proof he’s the one who killed Pierce?”

Chloe sighed. “You said it yourself - it was self-defense. Pierce had hired guns shooting at us. He himself shot me. Granted, I shot him first, but he was about to kill Lucifer. I must have blacked out when the bullet hit me. I didn’t see what happened here with Pierce. But if what you think happened really did happen and Lucifer was at the center of a shootout, then the blood you found was his, just like you said. He’s injured, and I need to find him.”

Ella looked at her for a long minute, and finally nodded. “Okay. What do you want me to tell the suits? I mean, our lieutenant is dead, probably killed by your partner. This’ll draw attention from downtown. I won’t be able to vanish any evidence. And if you disappear as well….”

“You’re right. Hang on.” Chloe pulled out her phone. All she needed was a sign of life. “Once we find evidence linking Pierce to the Sinnerman, we’re in the clear.”

She typed a quick text to Lucifer.  **_Where are you?_ **

“But even if we can’t - he tried to kill us. I heard him threaten to kill Lucifer. He or his goons tried to gun down my partner. If anyone says anything, tell them that.”

She waited, staring at her phone. In the deeper recesses of her mind, she was aware that she was still due a good freakout, once all activity had ceased and there was nothing more to distract her. But not yet. Not yet.

“Okay,” Ella said. “Don’t worry.”

Her phone pinged.  **_I didn’t think you’d want to see me again_ **

His photo next to his text, of him grinning his devilish grin, looking harmless and charming, paradoxically reminded her of what he had looked like when she’d last seen him.

_ Lucifer. The Devil. _ She couldn’t suppress a shiver.

Oh yes, a freakout was still very much on the table.

She fought it down by forcing her fingers to type.  **_Are you okay? Please tell me where you are._ **

There was a long pause.

She felt a sense of dread.  **_Please. Don’t run away. We can figure this out._ **

Finally, her phone pinged again.  **_I’m a monster_ **

**_I don’t care_ **

**_You don’t?_ **

_ Screw this, _ she thought, and pressed ‘dial’. Calling the Devil. On a human phone.

She suppressed an insane urge to laugh.

The pause before he picked up was just long enough to turn her budding hysteria into renewed worry. “No, I really don’t care,” she said as soon as the call connected.

“I have the looks to prove it!” he returned, voice rough.

Chloe noticed Ella moving away to give her privacy, but she lowered her voice anyway. “That doesn’t matter right now. I need to know if you’re okay.”

“It matters very much, Detective.” His voice sounded like he was crying. “I’m doing this to myself, because I deserve it, and I can’t get rid of it because I know I deserve to look like a - a… like a monster.” She could hear him draw a shuddering breath. “I killed a human. I killed… If I wasn’t damned before, I certainly am now.”

She lowered her head and turned towards the wall. “Lucifer,” she said his name. “ _ Lucifer. _ Calm down. Where are you?”

“You can’t possibly wish to see me again, Detective.”

“Lucifer! Tell. Me. Where. You. Are!”

More heavy breathing. “Home,” he finally admitted, voice breaking. “In the penthouse.”

_ Oh, thank God, _ she thought.  _ Thank… thank Lucifer’s Dad, apparently. Thank you, Lucifer’s Dad.  _ She put her free hand to her mouth to fight down renewed hysteria. “I’ll be right there,” she managed. “Don’t go anywhere. We’ll figure this out.”


	3. Chapter 3

The elevator doors opened for her, but Chloe couldn’t find Lucifer at first, and her heart plummeted. Had he left after all? Finally, to her relief, she spotted him near a window, sitting on the floor in a far corner of the spacious living section, his legs drawn up and his arms closed around them, his back leaning against the seat of his couch, head bowed.

“Lucifer….?”

He raised his head. The daylight streaming through the window put him in outline, but even all the way from the elevator and with him backlit like that, his current lack of hair was very evident to her. As were his softly glowing eyes.

_ The Devil. _

She took a deep breath. He had been crying; she’d heard it in his voice. Crying because he hadn’t thought to ever see her again. That was not someone she needed to fear, Devil or no.

Then she fully noticed his position on the floor, huddled against his couch but not on it. He didn’t look comfortable like that. Why wasn’t he at least on his couch?

“Detective,” he said softly, then turned away to face the window next to him. “You really did come here.”

“Of course I did.”

He made a soft sound. “I apologize for my looks, but….” He trailed off.

“Don’t worry about that,” she assured him, stepping forward a couple of steps, then hesitating.

He seemed at once defensive and miserable, otherworldly and as non-threatening as he could possibly be, folded in on himself like that, and Chloe felt herself respond with two conflicting impulses - respect his stay-away-vibes and leave him alone, or hug the stuffing out of him.

Hug Lucifer. Hug the Devil.

Indecisive, she took another step. Her foot kicked something away with a metallic clatter.

She looked down automatically. The floor was littered with bullets; at least two dozen of them. It was a measure of her mindset at the moment that she didn’t even think this was odd.

“I’m sorry I can’t promise that I’ll be back to my usual handsome looks anytime soon,” he went on, voice soft and toneless, still not looking at her. But at least he didn’t sound like he was crying anymore. “This is both my doing and, paradoxically, completely beyond my control.”

Gratefully, her mind seized that, this new thing to focus on. She took another step towards him. “Yeah, I don’t quite get that,” she said, unconsciously keeping her voice low and gentle as if afraid to startle him. “What’s wrong, exactly?”

He scoffed. “Nothing’s ‘wrong’, Detective. What you’re seeing is who I am. For once, my form reflects my being.”

She said nothing and instead came closer, slowly. “You look….” She cast about for a word to describe her impression of him, burned, dejected, desolate. “... Hurt,” she finally came up with.

“I look like a monster,” he returned, “because I am a monster. I told you so before. You wouldn’t believe me.” He gave another soft scoff. “Just like you wouldn’t believe I really am the Devil.” He turned his head back to face her, his glowing eyes looking directly at her. “Well, Detective, I am.”

“The Devil,” she repeated, because she found she needed to say it out loud.

“And a monster,” he insisted, his voice a little stronger. He raised one burned-looking hand to gesture at his red-charred face. “This is the face of a monster.”

“This is what you wanted to show me, before,” she realized.

He looked away, his hand dropping. “Yes. It didn’t work, then, because I believed -” his throat closed up, and he took a breath. “I actually thought back then that I didn’t deserve this face anymore, so it had somehow moved beyond my grasp.” He gave a broken laugh. “That’s clearly not the case anymore.” He bowed his head, somehow managing to make himself appear even smaller.

She took in his posture, huddled against the seat of his couch, on the floor. Not deserving. It always went back to that for him. People deserving punishment. Clearly, he believed that he deserved this punishment, this horrible face. Just like he apparently believed that he didn’t even deserve the comfort of sitting on his own couch.

By then, she had reached the other end of said couch and carefully sat down on the edge, keeping some distance between them but close enough to be able to see his face even against the light. “Lucifer,” she said gently, “please come up on the couch.”  _ Allow yourself that much, at least, _ she didn’t add out loud.

He looked up at her, the ‘why?’ unspoken but clearly visible in his posture, and, yes, even in his face, burned-looking and nearly unrecognizable though it was.

“This can’t be comfortable. You’re injured.”

He didn’t move. “That doesn’t matter.”

She knew him too well by now. “Because you deserve it?”

He stayed silent.

“Being in pain, being uncomfortable? Being abandoned? You think you deserve that?”

He continued to look at her. By now, her eyes had adjusted to the lighting, and she could discern his features, could clearly see the ravage of his normally so beautiful face. The sight was, simply put, horrible. He looked horrible.

Except for his eyes. With their black sclera and gently glowing irises, they merely looked otherworldly, even bizarrely beautiful.

She focused on them. The slight disorientation she had begun to feel at the sight of him, heralding a possible freak-out, receded. Those eyes meant that he wasn’t a burn victim. They signified that the change in him from dashingly handsome to what he was looking like now was more than skin deep. They told her that, inside, he truly was a being other than human, that his burns weren’t burns in the normal sense, but simply alien skin.

To look at him now, she realized, would be a hundred times worse if he had kept his human eyes.

“I deserve everything I have coming,” he answered her question.

Oh yes, she did know him too well. She took a breath and scooted at little closer to him. “Lucifer, I’ve told you this before. I know you believe what you’re saying. Hell, I can  _ see _ that you believe it. But I don’t.”

“You also wouldn’t believe that I’m the Devil. Yet here we are.”

“True, but that doesn’t mean that your other belief is also true. That’s a fallacy.”

They stared at one another.

“What if it isn’t?” he said, sounding plaintive. “Detective, I’ve killed. And what’s worse, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed watching the light go out in that pathetic man ham’s eyes, making sure he went to Hell where he belongs. That is the very reason why my Devil face is back; because I deserve it. I played the part of a monster, so now I have the looks to match.”

She looked at him, at his oh-so-familiar gestures as he underlined his words. He might be the Devil, but he was familiar to her. Underneath his exterior, this was still the Lucifer she’d always known, scorched skin and glowing eyes notwithstanding. “Please get up on the couch,” she said gently.

He hesitated, but then he rose from his position without using his hands, practically levitating upon the couch. He’d always moved with a characteristic elegance, but this was beyond human grace.

Because he was the Devil.

She closed her eyes and breathed, in and out.

“Detective, are you okay?” His voice sounded small, resigned.

She nodded, eyes still closed. “Fine. Just, you know, rearranging my worldview.” She looked at him and essayed a smile. “I’m not afraid of you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“You’re not afraid of the Devil?” he repeated incredulously.

“No.” She smiled again. This one felt much more at home on her face. “I’m just having trouble with the whole Heaven and Hell is real thing. I met you, Lucifer Morningstar, nightclub owner and amateur crime fighter who bargains with my daughter over Monopoly pieces and juggles evidence at crime scenes, long before I met the Devil in you. I know that humanity gets you wrong.”

He scoffed. “You’re certainly taking this much better than Doctor Linda did.”

“Wait. Linda knows?”

He nodded. Again, the movement was achingly familiar, despite his currently unfamiliar form. “Told her months ago.”

“Uh. Okay.” Realizing she was getting sidetracked, Chloe forced herself back on topic and scooted another little bit closer to him, until she was almost sitting right next to him. “Anyway. You’re not a monster, Lucifer.”

He opened his mouth, but she raised her hand.

“Please, hear me out. I get that you think that because you killed a man. And murder is not good, Lucifer. But.” She looked away from his hellish eyes to gather her thoughts. “This may be a strike against you, and you’re feeling guilty because of it. But you’re not defined by this one deed. I know if feels all-encompassing right now, but it doesn’t negate all the good things you’ve done. Like saving my life when you caught all those bullets with your wings.”

_ Wings. _ He had wings. Holy, not to put too fine a point on it, shit.

She looked at him to find him gazing back at her. Listening to her. “That’s selflessness, Lucifer. You didn’t have to do that. I didn’t ask you to, either. But you did it anyway, without hesitation, without question, at great cost to yourself. I saw all those feathers with your blood on them.” Carefully, she held out a hand towards him, almost close enough to touch.

What would his skin feel like now?

He looked at her hand, then back at her face. “You truly aren’t afraid of me,” he marveled. “That’s… I can’t believe it.” He looked away, blinking rapidly.

“Lucifer, I’ve never been afraid of you,” she forced out, and then she closed the distance between them and hugged him, scorched skin and hairless skull and all.

He sobbed once; his arms came up around her. She held him as he sagged against her in relief and exhaustion, still holding on, his head coming to rest on her shoulder.

For a while, she simply held him, then she dared move one hand until it brushed across his face. It felt very warm, smooth in some places, rough in others, the scarred skin tougher than human skin.

_ This, _ she thought with a strange mixture of thrill and elation, _ is the Devil. I’m holding the Devil in my arms. _

He made another small sound; she could feel his arms tighten just a little bit around her. In response, she ran her other hand over his back, causing a flinch.

She let him go immediately. “Lucifer. Tell me truthfully, are you okay?”

He, too, let go of her to look down at his hands, then back at her. “Truthfully, I’m not dying, if that’s what you’re worried about. Human weapons can only hurt me when I’m near you, and once I left, I started healing. Please don’t concern yourself, Detective.”

She noticed that he had not said that he was okay. Only one way to get the master of evading direct questions to answer this one. “Show me. Please.”

“You want to see my wings?” He sounded resigned, like that was all anyone would ever want to see of him.

“I want to see where you’re hurt so I can help you. If that means seeing your wings, then yes, I want to see them.”

For a minute, he looked at her in silence.

She noticed the way he held himself so stiffly, not quite sinking into the backrest, shoulders hunched forward just a bit. Like he was -- “You’re in pain,” she stated.

He looked away again, not denying it.

Chloe was a mother. Raising a newborn had instilled strong instincts in her. She was unable to resist wanting to help any being in pain, even if that being was the literal Devil. “Please, Lucifer. Let me see.”

“Detective….”

“Please.”

He sighed, relenting.

“Come on,” she said, “go lie down on your bed.”

He hesitated.

“Come on, Lucifer!”

To her surprise, that actually made him rise from the couch. “This is not how I imagined getting you into my bed,” he quipped.

She rolled her eyes, because that’s what they had always been.

It was then that she realized that nothing had changed. Nothing that really mattered, at least.

 

* * *

 

The bullets on the floor turned out to have dropped out from where they’d torn into his wings. But even though the bullets were out, his wings were still damaged, with numerous small wounds in various stages of healing and lots and lots of broken and bloodied feathers sticking in all directions.

Lucifer sat on his bed, one wing folded forward so he could reach it with his hands, pulling out the broken feathers while Chloe took care of his back.

She’d passed the oh-my-god-he-really-has-wings stage, vaulted over the hurdle of they’re-so-magnificent-I’m-going-to-die to stumble straight into the are-they-supposed-to-look-like-this trap that she was still struggling to get out of. She’d learned that there was a spot on his back where his wings met that he couldn’t quite reach, that the broken feathers needed to go so he could heal, and that he’d heal better once she’d left and gotten some distance between them. She worried that the wounds might become infected, even though he’d explained more than once that earthly bacteria couldn’t harm him.

And through all of this, she hadn’t felt the need to fight off another bout of the freaking out even once.

“You know what,” she finally said, in the midst of pulling out yet another broken pinfeather, “in case you’re wondering, I do want you to come back. To the precinct, I mean. As my partner.”

He half turned, presenting her his otherworldly profile and glowing eyes.

“I mean, as soon as you’ve un-Deviled yourself.”

He scoffed. “Easier said than done.”

“I’m aware. It all depends on what you think about yourself, and that’s up to you. I can only tell you that you’re no more a monster now than you were yesterday. And yesterday, I was very close to --” She interrupted herself. “... Close to inviting you over for another game night.” It wasn’t what she’d started out to say, but it was all she trusted herself to say right now.

He looked at her out of his Devil eyes, the slant of his head telling her that he guessed she was omitting something, but he let it go.

“It’ll be okay, Lucifer. All you have to do is stop blaming yourself.”

“No longer feel guilty,” he added. “Just like getting out of a Hell loop.”

She only had a vague idea what he meant by that, but she nodded. “Yeah. I guess.”

He gave her a smile. It looked strange on this face, but she was beginning to recognize his features despite the scorched look. “I’ll try.”

“Great.” She stroked along his wings by way of checking whether she’d gotten all the broken feathers. “I’ll leave you to heal, then. See you tomorrow at the precinct.”

“Tomorrow? That sounds overly optimistic.”

“Oh, I don’t think so. You’re a stubborn son of a gun. Besides, we have work to do.”

“Don’t we always?”

‘We’. They still had a ‘we’. They also had a long road ahead, but the ‘we’ was a great starting point.

“And I’m afraid I’ll have a couple of questions for you,” she said.

“‘A couple’?” he echoed, smiling.

“... Hundred. A couple hundred.” She rose from his bed, looking down at him with his wings and his Devil form. This clearly was a case for red wine. “Once I’ve recovered from my hangover.”

That earned her a genuine chuckle. “Right. Well, have fun getting it.”

“I will. So. See you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow.” He nodded, face setting, and she knew she would, indeed, see him tomorrow. “Yes. Good night, Detective.”

She gave him a smile. Now, everything truly was okay. “Good night, Lucifer. Morningstar.”


End file.
